[verdverm]

> They will become commodified and low-margin hosting providers will dominate the market.

I have my doubts about this. We have not seen a viable YouTube alternative because the underlying costs of handling video content are significant and YT has custom hardware and sophisticated software. When we look to the broader cloud market, hyperscalers dominate. We are likely seeing similar when it comes to Google's TPU and access to Nvidia's best offerings.

That being said, I did just pick up a DGX Spark and it runs qwen-3.6 sufficiently well to be a viable interactive coding assistant. Certainly more than enough for unattended agents.

[jononor]

YouTubes biggest moat the last 10 years is probably more that all the viewers and creators are already there. Any competitor has a huge disadvantage - creators are not interested in a place without viewers, and viewers not in a place without creators/content.

[verdverm]

yeah, network effect is real, and you cannot get viewers without competitive video delivery, so perhaps the moat is more like having an ocean on both sides

[jononor]

Network effect means it will be a huge and risky undertaking, and one needs to solve the bootstrap problem. But the costs of video delivery means that one would have to burn serious cash in the meantime. So it works in tandem.

TikTok kinda did manage to make a dent though - I suspect it substitutes for YouTube in some cases (though not all).

[ForHackernews]

Maybe, but if custom hardware and economies of scale are the determining factor, that favors Google (and Amazon/Microsoft), not OpenAI or Anthropic.

[verdverm]

Definitely, Google Vertex Ai serves up other companies models better than they can themselves. The TPU is the bee's knees. I really hope Google makes a take on the DGX Spark

[danaw]

arguing that the reason youtube is succeeding is because of video hosting costs is hilariously misguided.

the content and creators are the only competitive advantage they have. there are MANY video hosting platforms out there but they just don't have the content to attract large audiences like youtube does. they have a strong early mover advantage

[ej88]

Theres no viable yt alternative because of network effects not the video hosting

Those same network effects dont exist (yet) on models

[verdverm]

There is a bit of apples vs. oranges

It is unlikely that models will have network effect because (1) there is less of a two-sided marketplace and (2) people are already forming brand preferences. We also see significant convergence among the agent harnesses as well.

I'm currently building out an internal agentic orchestration platform for business and development and a requirement is to support multiple models and tools so people have an amount of choice.

[Ekaros]

Discoverability of other content and ad money. And then critical mass of viewers leading to sponsorships and other exploitative models of monetising outside Google.

Ads might be questionable model for lot of use cases. And network model only works for promotion but does not lock users in because content is only available in one place.

[ej88]

im not sure i understand your reply, but it sounds like you're agreeing with me that yts biggest advantage is the network effect?

[Ekaros]

Yes. And that won't work wit AI.